As may be known, a call center or the like may be established by or on behalf of a business organization in order that the business organization may effectuate contact with clients thereof in order to service the clients in the course of operating the business organization. The call center may be established primarily to receive incoming calls from the clients regarding the business organization and the goods and/or services offered thereby, and/or to generate outgoing calls to the clients regarding same. Typically, the incoming and/or outgoing calls are telephone calls, although other types of calls may also be employed.
In the call center, a plurality of call-handling agents may be arranged to handle the calls, where each call agent may be trained by or on behalf of the call center to handle calls in a prescribed manner or may be expected to handle each call on an ad hoc basis. Typically, although by no means necessarily, each agent is situated at a work station with call communication equipment and a computing device. As should be understood, the call communication equipment may be a headset or handset or the like whereby the agent can communicate at least aurally with a client by way of the call communication equipment, and the computing device may be a computer or terminal or the like that allows the agent access to data and other information relevant to the client, and that also may provide the agent with a script or the like that the agent may refer to in the course of communicating with the client. The computing device may include software or the like specifically tailored to the operation of the call center and the activities of the agent at the computing device, and it may in fact be the case that that the computing device and software may control the call communication equipment as employed by the agent at such computing device.
Inasmuch as the call center may have a relatively large number of agents and physical space in the call center may be at a premium, it can be the case that there are a large number of agents in the call center at work stations in close proximity to each other in a single room, perhaps with little if any in the way of physical separation between the work stations. Arrangements of such agents and work stations in such physical space at a call center are many and varied, but it is not unusual to have agents arranged to sit only 3 or 4 feet away from adjacent agents.
As should be appreciated, the general emotional stresses experienced by each agent while working in the call center can be relatively high to start out, and can be heightened merely because the agent is so close to other agents. Moreover, such stresses can be intensified if background noise from the other agents is deemed excessive, which is more likely to happen as the agent is closer to other agents. Background noise can thus be considered to be a significant issue in the call center.
That said, a distinction is to be made between overall background noise, which may be characterized as the indistinct hum generated from multiple speaking agents conversing with clients, and the background noise from an excessively loud agent, which may be characterized as the utterly distinct sound from that agent conversing loudly with the client thereof. In particular, it has been empirically observed that while overall background noise is bothersome, such overall background noise can usually be ‘tuned out’ by an agent and thereby ignored or at least managed by the agent. In contrast, it has also been empirically observed that the utterly distinct sound from an excessively loud agent is not only bothersome but also cannot be as easily tuned out by an agent, and thus can become an unmanageable distraction for the agent.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for reducing background noise as perceived by agents in a call center. Specifically, a need exists for such a system and method where an excessively loud agent in the call center is detected and mitigated. In particular, a need exists for such a system and method where a detected excessively loud agent is notified of same so that the excessively loud agent can quiet oneself and be less bothersome to adjacent agents in the call center. Accordingly, the adjacent agents can proceed with their conversations with less distraction.